education – Jayampathi Guruge

Actor’s Philosophy

Education

The primary focus of an Actor/Performer training process is one of self-discovery. My idea was to experiment with creating an Actor/Performer training model based on the teachings of meditation and Buddhist philosophy whose premise is the non-existence of a static or permanent self.

This journey creates a space to begin understanding the very meaning of one’s own being.

This program challenged its participants with the questions of what we mean by ‘the contemporary Actor or Performer’ ? Who do we mean?

The process included detailed discussions about the self of the Actor/Performer as well as imagining the Character’s self and Character’s universe. Rather than devoting time to teaching facts, the focus was on gaining experiential knowledge. Actors/Performers were given ample time and space to strive to understand their experiences within this course while being guided by frequent discussion.

Among the topics explored were the internal changes wrought by the acting process, the impact that one had on wider society as well as the responsibility that one had towards oneself as an Actor/Performer. There was also time devoted to understanding oneself in the present, set against the backdrop of the identity of a person that is created over a lifetime of experiences. The course was designed to allow the performance artist to delve into the question “who am I?”, in the context of the self being continually impacted, influenced and changed by one’s current day to day life or one’s artistic expression and work.

I began to envision a training process which would facilitate a journey; a journey through which would emerge a familiarity with the layers that exist between performance on a stage and the performative aspects of what we collectively agree on as being ordinary life, in other words, a bridge between the personal and the professional. I believe that this journey creates a space to begin understanding the very meaning of one’s own being.

- One Year Residence program -

We should not confine what we believe into our works of art - our beliefs should be alive in our own lives.

Everyone has a story to tell. Sometimes, more than one. We need to choose the one with the greatest importance, to the self. With the desire I have to nudge artists into this process of self-discovery and my own experience in seeing artists achieve a sense of holism through art, I hope to facilitate a space in which it becomes easy to discover which story we would like to tell, and the way in which to tell it. Furthermore, this is an attempt to give artists the opportunity to stretch themselves beyond the classroom – to discover being an artist through his or her own way of life. It’s important that we take the time – to live life. While this can be explored as a group, or as an individual, it’s also important to take time to build relationships – with ourselves and with others, in order to understand life more fully.

SpaceEka Sri Lanka - 2022

Participant Artists